Healthcare in America: My Mother’s Story

This is about my mother. I want you to hear her story, because the @GOP are going to kill her if they take away our healthcare.

She was born with polycystic renal disease, a hereditary condition that has inflicted almost all of the women in my family. My grandmother had a transplant and lived a fairly long life. My aunt got a transplant from one of my uncles. She too is doing well.

My mother cannot. Her disease spread throughout her body, affecting her kidneys and liver. She lives in pain every day of her life. As a teenager, I used to cry myself to sleep at night worrying I would lose her. She’s the most important person on earth to me.

She’s the most loving, kindest, altruistic soul I have ever met. Like so many others, she suffers unfairly, undeservedly. My entire life I have put her needs ahead of my own, although if I’m honest, it’s really selfish: I don’t want to lose her, I can’t.

Her disease progressed the way it has because there were times in our life she couldn’t afford insurance, especially with her condition. And my family told me to never get tested for the disease, because if I had it, I would have trouble getting health insurance too.

That’s how it went in many families. You don’t get checked out because you would be punished for doing so. That is, until #ObamaCare. And even though the term was meant derisively I proudly call it that, because Obama did in fact care. He’s a good man, treated horribly.

Since the election, I have seen the fear in my mother’s eyes, the stress in her voice, because the @GOP are so adamant about repeal. It is only in these few years she’s been able to see a specialist again. It’s the only time in my life I wasn’t overwhelmed with worry.

Today has obviously changed that. If the @SenateGOP repeal #ObamaCare, it will be a death sentence for her. (And probably me too.)

She will lose access to her specialist, medications controlling her condition. She won’t be able to go on dialysis when that time comes. I will lose her sooner than I should. I will lose her because the @GOP cared more about a tax break for the rich than my mother’s life.

Instead of dialysis, she will go into kidney failure. And I will watch her die a horrible death. That’s my future under @GOP healthcare.